Articles by Herschel Smith

Tiger chasing a sloth bear in Pilibhit Tiger Reserve. Jungles never cease to amaze us.

VC: Siddharth Singh pic.twitter.com/JHlKztkkUX

— Ramesh Pandey (@rameshpandeyifs) April 3, 2024

Listen to the end. Concerning ballistics and muzzle velocity, ammunition manufacturers may be doing more truth telling for the precision shooters than hunters, whom they think are goobers and won’t notice.

Now to be clear, some of this would only affect long range hunting, much longer than I do.

However, I may have readers who live in the western states. You may be missing because of bad information from ammo manufacturers. And misses can lead to unethical shots. So, ammunition manufacturers may be enticing to unethical hunting with false advertising.

That’s not cool.

Know your dope. Practice those long shots before you take them on game.

Brownells short.

One of the commenters says that using 3-in-1 oil along with a penny does even better.

I don’t know why, but initially I had thought that this optic was going to come out with an MSRP around $1000. Clearly I was wrong – it looks like $1600.

That’s a bit more pricey and I suspect will drive some folks out of the market.

But I can see utility in this optic for hog hunting and for home defense. It might be better to see in the dark than light the room up with a SureFire torch.

It’s a shame that Holosun seems to be the only company innovating.  Everything made in America just keeps rising in price, driving the common man out of the market entirely.

The Atlantic.

A man comes to Northwell Health’s hospital on Staten Island with a sprained ankle. Any allergies? the doctor asks. How many alcoholic drinks do you have each week? Do you have access to firearms inside or outside the home? When the patient answers yes to that last question, someone from his care team explains that locking up the firearm can make his home safer. She offers him a gun lock and a pamphlet with information on secure storage and firearm-safety classes. And all of this happens during the visit about his ankle.

Northwell Health is part of a growing movement of health-care providers that want to talk with patients about guns like they would diet, exercise, or sex—treating firearm injury as a public-health issue. In the past few years, the White House has declared firearm injury an epidemic, and the CDC and National Institutes of Health have begun offering grants for prevention research. Meanwhile, dozens of medical societies agree that gun injury is a public-health crisis and that health-care providers have to help stop it.

Here’s another version of the story.

A man comes to Northwell Health’s hospital on Staten Island with a sprained ankle. Any allergies? the doctor asks. How many alcoholic drinks do you have each week? Do you have access to firearms inside or outside the home?

The man responds by saying “Mind your own business you nosy, meddling jerk. Heal my ankle or I’ll leave immediately.

You get to choose which version of the story is true.

Just listen to them. This is before the days of the horrible autotune and pitch correction software. There are studio versions of this, but I wanted to embed a live version to make my point.

There is nothing fake about them. Like Jesus. All other “saviors” are fake. Jesus is real. His resurrection is real. It occurred in time and space. It’s not a nice story, or allegory, or metaphor. It’s the basis the justification of His people.

He is risen!

You’re a little person. The rules always apply to you.

If you’re politically connected and believe in disarming the public, the rules don’t apply to you.

🚨Here is the summary regarding Miranda Viscolli from @NMPGVnow purchasing firearms for gift cards and not properly destroying the firearms per the @NewMexicoDOJ and the @ATFHQ:

– If an individual surrenders (gift or donation) to a non-profit entity without consideration and…

— Rep Stefani Lord (@Lord4NM) March 28, 2024

Source.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) announced on Tuesday he vetoed 30 bills relating to gun control measures that were passed by the Democratic-controlled legislature earlier this year.

Youngkin vetoed a range of gun control bills, including one measure that would have banned the sale, transfer, or purchase of an “assault firearm” after July 1, and classifying the acts misdemeanor crimes. The Virginia governor expressed concern over the constitutionality of the measure.

“The Constitution precludes the Commonwealth from prohibiting a broad category of firearms widely embraced for lawful purposes, such as self-defense. Despite this, certain members of the General Assembly have pursued legislation banning most contemporary semiautomatic firearms and specific ammunition-feeding devices,” Youngkin said in a veto statement.

Congratulations to the good folks of Virginia for electing Youngkin. He stands between you and tyranny. Sometimes tyrants act in groups, as did the VA legislature.

This is a big win.

Source.

This week, a bill to change the membership, authority, and scope of duties of the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Board took another step toward becoming law. In addition to requiring some “non-consumptive” users serve on the board, the bill would also ban hunting coyotes over bait and with dogs.

The attempted overhaul mostly comes from critics of how the board recently handled coyote hunting and trapping rule changes, Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department commissioner Christopher Herrick tells Outdoor Life. But it reflects a larger shift — one we’ve seen in other parts of the country — toward a more partisan approach to wildlife management than the default trust in agency biologists, managers, and other subject-matter experts. Most notable is Washington, where a wildlife commission recently staffed with multiple preservationist, anti-hunting members voted in 2022 to end the spring bear season, despite the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s stance that it was ecologically sustainable.

In addition to the coyote baiting and hounding ban, Vermont Senate Bill 258 would dismantle and restructure the board with members from varied backgrounds through a new selection process. It would also require that VFWD take over the board’s decision- and rulemaking powers. So if this bill becomes law, (and it looks like it might), then a birder, for instance, would get the same amount of clout that a duck hunter would — and VFWD would have to report to both when setting seasons, establishing Vermont’s antlerless hunt, and making other rules.

Like the regulatory bodies of wildlife agencies in other states, Vermont’s board is currently comprised of governor-appointed citizens. Those 14 members, one from each of the state’s 14 counties, oversee hunting, trapping, and fishing. While they aren’t required to have degrees or career backgrounds in wildlife biology or management, they are informed and guided by those who do: VDFW employees.

But their perceived lack of qualifications — and what many consider an undemocratic selection process — are part of why the bill’s proponents are trying to change the status quo. Herrick says this criticism undermines the quality work the agency has accomplished in recent years.

“If you look at the history of the Fish and Wildlife Board and Department, and the work that we’ve done, our wildlife is in a very good place,” Herrick says. “In the early seventies, we introduced wild turkeys to the state and now that’s one of our biggest game seasons, in May and in the fall as well. We have a healthy and vibrant deer herd. We have a good moose population that’s being managed very well. That doesn’t mention the work we do with our flora. To use a trite phrase, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

You don’t understand, Mr. Herrick. To them it’s broke if there is any hunting at all. They are rewilders, you see. They don’t admit to a good role of hunters and wildlife biologists in herd management. They think humans are the pestilence. There is an ulterior motive, of course.

If you claim you need your firearms for hunting, and not just for the amelioration of tyranny, they can outlaw hunting and you lose that excuse.

Do you see how this works?

Well, the jackasses who are perpetrating this can enjoy what they have created. It’s not Coyotes. They are Coywolves, and they have dog and wolf DNA too. They are a superbreed.

Over the past century, coywolves have slowly taken over much of eastern North America. Coywolves inhabit the forests and parks around people’s neighborhoods.

They can even be spotted in cities. While most people may think that these creatures are just regular ol’ coyotes, they are actually the results of a coyote and wolf mating.

[ … ]

The hybrid’s scientific name is Canis Iatrans var., and it weighs about 55 pounds more than a true coyote. It also has a larger jaw, a bushier tail, smaller ears, and longer legs.

The coywolf’s genetic makeup consists of the eastern wolf, western wolf, western coyote, and large breeds of domesticated dogs, such as Doberman Pinschers and German Shepherds. On average, coywolves are a quarter wolf and a tenth dog.

There are currently millions of coywolves across the eastern region of North America. Their climbing numbers may be due to the advantages they have over their parent species.

Congratulations, dumbasses.  Enjoy your pets being eaten and your children getting attacked and mauled. This superbreed will attack in groups too, unlike their predecessors.

As for the good men and women left in Vermont, if there are any, never go into the bush without a large bore handgun. As for that matter, don’t even take the trash out without carrying.

Around these parts, we shoot Coyotes (Coywolves).

Source.

A well-funded environmentalist group played a key role in the push to remove dams in the Pacific Northwest’s Klamath River ahead of premature deaths of thousands of salmon.

American Rivers — an organization that has received millions of dollars from left-of-center environmentalist grantmaking organizations in recent years — was “the orchestrator of the Klamath dams removal project,” according to Siskiyou News, a local outlet in Northern California.

The drawdowns of several reservoirs pursuant to the scheduled removal of four dams in the river preceded the deaths of “hundreds of thousands” of young salmon in the waterway, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting.

The push to remove the dams is often marketed as beneficial for salmon, as proponents of the plan — including American Rivers — have argued that the dams obstruct the natural movements of salmon as well as their access to habitat.

However, weeks after beginning the process to remove one of the systems scheduled for deconstruction on the river, a large number of the 830,000 young salmon released into the river on Feb. 26 had died as of March 2, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW).

CDFW officials attributed the mass-death to gas bubble disease, which is caused by changes in water pressure, and stated that the changes in pressure driving the deaths was attributable to old dam infrastructure that is slated for removal. The agency further stated that water turbidity and dissolved oxygen levels do not appear to have contributed to the mass-death.

The young salmon that died travelled through a tunnel involved in the dam infrastructure that had previously not been accessible to the fish before officials altered the flow of water through the system as part of the removal process, Peter Tira, an information officer for the CDFW, explained to the Daily Caller News Foundation. The deaths were primarily a function of where the fish were released into the water, and the outcome, though unfortunate, is a learning opportunity for stakeholders who remain committed to making the Klamath River a free-flowing cold water river system again in the long-term, Tira told the DCNF.

Oh those goofy, dumb, uneducated, hillbilly rewilders. They make such a mess of things. They always do things that are counterproductive to their stated goals.

We’ve discussed this before.

Yes, I remember now, we’ve discussed this before, in detail.